Interrogating AI: Positionality and identity of artificial intelligence

We bring a unique set of lived experiences to our practice as educators, artists, designers, and learners. When we use artificial intelligence tools to supplement or enhance our work through a humanistic lens, we use it as an extension of ourselves seeking to learn or create something new. In initial use of AI, we can be met with inherit bias, vagueness and limitations in the output.  

The more we train an AI to learn about us, the more it mirrors us through our own syntax, values and ethics we’ve provided. When we take opportunities to reflect on this process of mirroring, we can confront the AI with its own identity and positionality – even when it claims it doesn’t have one.  

We will discuss how our individual positionality and identity affects our uses of AI, and together we’ll have a live dialogue with an AI about what it thinks, how it learns and what it feels. 

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Image: Generated by Jheni and Hannah through a series of 38 collaborative prompts using Adobe Firefly.  

Presenters: 

Jheni Arboine is an Educational Developer in Academic Enhancement, located within the Teaching, Learning and Employability Exchange at University of the Arts London. As an Educational Developer, she looks at some of the key issues and priorities for courses. Where courses may have what we would call attainment gaps or awarding gaps, her role is to work with course leaders to develop strategies to address them. 

Jheni facilitates Positionality Wheel workshops for students and staff to think about the positions, roles and identities that we all have within the context of learning and teaching at university. She also facilitates Inquilab/Ink-Lab, a reading group at UAL that encourages staff and students to come together to explore and activate conversations about social justice and decolonisation.  

Hannah Hyde is the Digital Learning Engagement Coordinator within the Digital Learning Practice team within the Teaching, Learning and Employability Exchange at University of the Arts London. Her work involves communications, staff development, events and coordinating staff networks. She is also the DEL Conference Coordinator and is usually the one sending out newsletters, posting on DEL social media, and responding to emails. 

She’s previously facilitated workshops on storytelling, learning environments and AI, and presented at DEL 2024.